Mary "Jacky" Faber
"Since I am sort of a lady I will not use the words here that I want to use, the ones I learned in the street," I say through my teeth. "I will only say, Bless you, Sir, and Bless all the lords and Bless all the ladies in this land and Bless you, too, Lord Grenville, and Bless the horse that brought you here, and Bless all the Generals and all the Admirals, yes, Bless them all and Bless them so hard that they'll never forget. Finally, oh yes, finally, Bless the Bloody Blessed King!" -Jacky Faber, My Bonny Light Horseman Character Overview Mary "Jacky" Faber is the protagonist of the "Bloody Jack" series. She is an adventurous girl living in the 1800s, trying to find a balance between a happy life of freedom and a lawful one. Physical Appearance As of "Wild Rover No More", Jacky is nearly eighteen years old (she is about thirteen years old at the beginning of the series). She has blonde hair, but most of it is shaved off in "The Wake of the 'Lorelei Lee'" and in subsequent journeys and adventures. She wears what little hair she has in a pigtail. She has dark brown eyes, and is usually quite tan. As of "The Mark of the Golden Dragon", she has two tattoos: a blue anchor on her right hip and a "Mark of the Golden Dragon" on the back of her neck. Along with those tattoos she also has blue powder burns around one of her eyes. Personal History Before the Series Mary Faber started off life in as the eldest daughter in a middle-class family in London. For the first ten years of her life, she lived with her parents and her younger sister, Penelope (Penny), who was seven years younger than Mary. However, on a day that she later called "That Dark Day", her parents and her younger sister died of illness (possibly the Plague), and Mary was tossed out on the streets. For the next two to three years, she made her living begging on the streets with a gang of street urchins led by a boy named Rooster Charlie. Bloody Jack Early in the first book, ''Bloody Jack'', Mary's group can't find the leader, Rooster Charlie. Mary goes to look for him and finds him dead on the street. (Later on in the series, we discover Charlie is killed by Muck the Corpseseller.) Mary leaves the gand, hoping not to end up dead on the streets like poor Charlie. She takes Charlie's pants, shirt, vest, and shiv, and disguises herself as a boy named Jack and signs up on a warship called the HMS Dolphin, as a ship's boy. She is joined by five other boys: Tink, Benjy, Davy, Willy, and Jaimy and quickly makes friends with the other boys after a quick scuffle with Willy to assert herself as someone not to be picked on. She stays on the ship for about a year (during this time, she experiences her first period and develops breasts). Eventually, however, she is captured by a pirate, LeFievre (whom the Dolphin has been chasing for most of the book), and is outed as a female after returning to the ship. She is then sent off to a girls' boarding school in Boston, Massachusetts, called the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls. Curse of the Blue Tattoo Jacky arrives at the girls' boarding school in Boston, called the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls. She quickly makes friends with a girl named Amy Trevelyne and becomes enemies with Clarissa Worthington Howe (of the Virginia Howes). However, Jacky is frequently made fun of by Clarissa and some of the other girls, especially Lisette de Lise, for her unladylike behavior and her British accent. Jacky starts earning money by leaving the school during the nights and singing at a bar called 'The Pig and Whistle' with a drunk artist named Gulliver "Gully" McFarland. During the day, she skips school to go to the harbor and gets arrested for causing distractions in a public area (dancing in public while playing a pennywhistle and displaying a female limb). After her attorney, Ezra Pickering, gets her out of jail, Mistress Pimm demotes her to serving girl. Jacky spends most of the book as a servant. Throughout the book, she is kept busy because the school preacher, Reverend Mather, believes her to be Janey Porter, a serving girl he raped and killed, coming back to haunt him. He believes Jacky needs to be killed (as she is a witch) and that she is filled with evil. Jacky pretends to be the ghost of Janey Porter during the night in order to get the Reverend to confess that he killed Janey since everyone had previously believed she committed suicide. Eventually, Mistress Pimm discovers that Jacky has been keeping up with her lessons, despite being demoted to serving girl, and reinstates her as a lady. Soon afterward, Jacky and Amy go to the Trevelynes' farm, and Jacky fills in for a jockey on a horse she met earlier in the book, [[the Sheik of Araby|the Sheik of Araby]]. At a party soon after Jacky's win, Clarissa gets Jacky drunk, and Jacky is almost raped by Lieutenant Flashby, but Randall saves her honour. This embarrassment is the cause of Jacky trying to run away from the Lawson Peabody, but she is kidnapped by the Preacher's men. Soon after, as she escapes from the priest, who burns alive in the church, the city of Boston catches fire, the Lawson Peabody is burnt to the ground, and Jacky runs away into the night, headed off for England. Relationships *'Jaimy Fletcher:' her on-again/off-again fiance throughout most of the series. *'Mistress Miranda Pimm:' the headmistress of the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls . Although she seemed to hate Jacky in the beginning, she soon grew fond of her wayward student, especially after Jacky rescued her from the fire. *'Amy Trevelyne:' Jacky's best friend. They met each other at the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in the second book, "Curse of the Blue Tattoo". They got along quite well, and Amy wrote down all that Jacky told her about her time on the Dolphin, which Amy then turned into a book. She later turns several of Jacky's adventures, including her time at the Lawson Peabody, into more books, much to the embarrassment of Jacky. *'Clarissa Worthington Howe:' her mortal enemy in school. The two girls positively hated each other in "Curse of the Blue Tattoo", mostly because Jacky became more popular than Clarissa due to her adventures. Then, Clarissa's fiance, Randall Trevelyne, broke off the engagement because he was in love with Jacky. *'Rebecca Adams: '''another of Jacky's friends from the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls . She is only twelve years old in "Curse of the Blue Tattoo" and is the youngest girl enrolled at the school. When Jacky is demoted to serving girl, Rebecca tutors her in embroidery, while Jacky tutors Rebecca in reading, writing, and arithmetic. She is implied to be John Adams' granddaughter. *'Randall Trevelyne:' is Amy Trevelyne's older brother. He had a crush on Jacky, and broke off his engagement with Clarissa Worthington Howe because of it. He is jealous of Jacky because she has been on so many adventures while being only a young girl, whereas he, a grown man, has had none. In "My Bonny Light Horseman", it is revealed that Randall ran away from home to join the French army to go on an adventure on his own. In "The Wake of the Lorelei Lee", he falls in love with one of Jacky's old gang-mates, Polly Von. *'Robin Raeburne:' Robin and Jacky met while on the 'Wolverine'. The two were midshipmen together. They almost slept together when Jacky believed she was going to be raped by the captain. *'Jean-Paul de Valdon:' Jacky's friend, starting in "My Bonny Light Horseman". They were both spies in the British Naval Intelligence, and he is a rich, French aristocrat. *'Flaco Jimenez:' a pirate that Jacky met while sailing the Caribbean. He is another one of Jacky's many former flames. Jacky helped Flaco regain his ship after his second-in-command mutinied against him. *'Lord Richard Allen:' a young British captain that Jacky meets in "Mississippi Jack". He won a kiss lasting 'til the count of thirty from Jacky during a game, and claimed kiss while en route to New Orleans, while Jacky and he were skinny dipping in the Mississippi. This little incident occurred just as Jaimy was catching up to the Belle of the Golden West in his canoe, and caused Jaimy to leave Jacky, thinking that she had not been faithful to him. Richard and Jacky remain close throughout the series, and he proposes marriage a number of times. *'Cheng Shih: '''a female Chinese pirate who kidnaps Jacky in "The Wake of the 'Lorelei Lee'". It is strongly suggested that she was deeply in love with Jacky, and tried to keep her as a "pet". However, once she realized how happy Jaimy made Jacky, she allowed them to leave together. Category:Bloody Jack Category:Characters Category:Female Characters Category:Major Characters Category:Royal Navy Category:Fabers Shipping